tetraradical en · ADJ
Etymology
From tetra- + radical.
Meanings
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(not-comparable, said of Semitic languages but rare) Having four consonants in its root.
With regard to ppl roots, Arabic has the noun dadan ‘toy’, probably a child’s term, but this is only a nominal root. Ethiopic also has a few examples with an identical first and second consonant root: these cases are derived from tetraradical forms of a biconsonantal origin, for example Eth. ssl ‘to leave’ < slsl < *sl.
2011 March 1, Eulàlia Vernet i Pons, “Semitic Root Incompatibilities and Historical Linguistics”, in Journal of Semitic Studies, volume 56, number 1, →DOI, page 3 footnote 6: